From DefenseTech
"Here’s some film of the second F-35B short take-off and vertical landing Joint Strike Fighter test plane making its first vertical landing on Jan. 10 at Naval Air Station Patuxent River in Maryland."
The F-35B is powered by Pratt & Whitney's F135 engine, the only engine powering the Joint Strike Fighter through its flight tests.
You’ve been told: P&W’s engine to power the JSF is already 2.5$ Billion over budget with more than $1 billion in overruns within the past year. You should know: $1.78 of this alleged overrun is the result of new requirements ordered by the Pentagon because of added weight to the aircraft. Of the remaining $800M, approximately one third is attributed to the lift system hardware developed by GE’s partner Rolls Royce as a subcontractor to P&W.
Additional costs were attributed to a redesign of the third stage turbine blade in 2009. This redesign was a normal part of development and test of propulsion systems and yields a safer, more reliable engine.
Pratt & Whitney has worked very aggressively through the last year to bring down our engine costs. We have invested significantly towards achieving our cost reduction goals. The F135 is on track to meet its cost targets and the Joint Assessment Team agrees that we have an executable plan as demonstrated in our most recent contract proposal which offers a double digit percentage savings to the government. The Joint Assessment Team which evaluated cost and affordability of the F135 program validated that Pratt & Whitney’s cost reduction plan was achievable, and in the DoD response to the GAO report said “Pratt & Whitney can realistically achieve their cost goals.”
The additional funding provided to Pratt & Whitney in 2010 is to support the extension of the F-35 flight test program following the program’s restructuring. It IS NOT related to development of the F135 engine. (Pratt defends cost-cutting measures on F-35 engine, Reuters, 3/12/10)
You’ve been told: GE Rolls-Royce F136 engine performs better and costs less.
You should know: An engine that hasn’t left the ground can’t perform better. The F135 is in production, in the air and the only engine powering the F-35 today.
You’ve been told: Competition will fix P&W’s cost overruns.
You should know: Competition Already Determined the Winner. Competition for the JSF engine happened at the contractor level when competing airframers selected a P&W engine under government rules. This process of selecting subsystems, including the engine, as part of the overall weapon system, is standard during concept demonstration. The DoD has concluded that further competition will NOT save taxpayer dollars. No other military aircraft developed in the past three decades has been procured with multiple engine suppliers. There is no extra engine for the F-22, F/A-18, C-17 or the BlackHawk and Apache military helicopters. GE thinks the government should pick the winners and losers. Pratt & Whitney believes the marketplace should pick the winners and losers.
Yet, attempts by some in Congress to push a wasteful $1.1 trillion omnibus spending bill have thankfully been turned back by Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) and Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine). These two principled New Englanders understand that rushing a bad bill with more than 6,600 earmarks and a cost of $8.6 billion was far worse than simply passing the National Defense Authorization Act, which the House finally did with just hours to spare.
Chief among the waste that needs to be cut in 2011 is nearly half a billion dollars for the GE/Rolls-Royce F136 extra engine, which is years behind Pratt & Whitney’s proven F135 now in production. Moreover, the F136 continues to suffer numerous developmental setbacks, adds no additional capability, complicates future military logistics, creates no net jobs since the number of F-35 aircraft will not change, and diverts vital funds that could support the warfighter in countless other ways. No wonder this engine has been opposed vigorously by Presidents Bush and Obama, their defense secretaries and military service chiefs, along with a coalition of third parties that spans the political spectrum from organized labor to fiscal conservatives.
As our recent ads in the Hartford, Connecticut and Portland, Maine daily newspapers note, we appreciate Sen. Lieberman and Snowe’s “vigilance and astute stewardship of the American taxpayer’s money.” Clearly, government agencies need a predictable and transparent funding stream; this is especially true for the Defense Department as they continue to wage war in southwest Asia. But in an age of unprecedented belt-tightening and voter discontent with politics as usual, a bloated omnibus bill infected with thousands of earmarks totaling billions of dollars was simply irresponsible, as would continuation of the F136 through the NDAA or other means.
As the holiday break ends and the new 112th Congress take their seats, they should seriously consider what “gifts” they bestow on themselves, our warfighters and the American taxpayers. Wasteful earmarks like half a billion dollars for the F136 extra engine aren’t just woefully out of style or even a souring lump of coal. They are the dreaded leftover fruitcake no one can swallow.
– EagleBlogger
On Sunday's This Week With Christiane Amanpour, White House economic adviser Austan Goolsbee responds to ABC's Jake Tapper's question about fat in the budget (spending discussion begins at 6:30) :
Tapper: Where specifically does President Obama want to cut spending? Where is there fat to cut from the budget?
Goolsbee: Well, as you know the President's going to release his budget. We are going to have to make in the immediate run a series of tough choices. And the President's not afraid to do that and I think you will see that in his budget.
Tapper: Give me one. One spending cut the President's willing to do.
Goolsbee: Well, last year you saw they put out $20 plus billion in terminations and reductions. The President obviously doesn't just get to dictate what those cuts would be, but you saw with the Joint Strike Fighter second engine and a series of other specific cuts.
